The so-called future wasn’t. The real future has not happened yet.

Richard Fernandez on what's happening now and the upcoming changes.

The ideologies forged in the 20th century are dying and with them will go many of our familiar guideposts. They’ve been around for so long many will find it hard to believe they are actually slipping away. For decades it was the unstated assumption that superstates like the EU and a giant federal government were the coming thing. How if what we conventionally consider the “future” is actually the past?

That’s why things are so unstable. The so-called future wasn’t.

The real future has not happened yet. This is not an entirely trite observation. The years since the fall of the Berlin Wall have been characterized by a futile attempt to buy stability through risk sharing. There was no crisis, which if sufficiently enlarged, could not be solved. Yet it failed. In an era of rapid change emergent risks can no longer be spread. Survival will depend not upon building a bigger boat but making the right choices.

This breaks politics, especially redistributive and identity politics and hence the politicians have not accepted that yet. But they will, and relatively soon. The next decade will be hard; and our only consolation will be that if we win through we will be better men and freer too. But first we survive. First we survive.